It has been a lovely sunny week. We have taken at vantage of this weather this week and got outside as much as possible. On Monday we played with the parachute outside and later in the week enjoyed the sunshine and out story ‘James and the Giant Peach’. 

We continued our work around Abbotsford and looked at ‘Toadstones’. Toad stone where given to pregnant women to ward off evil spirits especially fairies. Ask your children about them, they should be able to tell you some of this information. We made our own toadstones out of clay which was great fun. They look really good.

We also had another Sphero Indis session this week working on tricky coding and debugging but we have been working so well to problem solve and are having lots of fun. 

We finished off our St Patrick’s Day clovers too. In other learning we wrote some acrostic poems about foods, learned the u-e sound and worked on counting up amounts of money. 

We had a fantastic trip out to Abbotsford House on Thursday. The children all displayed excellent manners, attitude and followed the school rules and expectations brilliantly. We had a fantastic time and learned a lot about the house and Sir Walter Scott. We even learned how to measure a tree to see how old it might be. We will be looking more at Abbotsford in the next couple weeks. Below are loads of picture from the day. We were all exhausted when we came back to school so had a nice afternoon learning about St Patrick’s day. 

This week we had a special visitor on Thursday. Mr Graham from the inspire learning team brought in a special robot car fo pr us to learn more about coding.  We had great fun during our first session learning about what the different mats do. 

This week completed our Who am I? Poems. The children did a super job and these are now being displayed within the classroom. 

​Next week wb 21st March is the return of the Big Wheel and Walk. We encourage children to take part by scooting, walking or cycling to school. Classes will record the number of participants daily and the school will be entered into daily prize draws. Each day there will be a special golden padlock placed on a one bike or scooter at the MUGA area for P1-3/4 and also one at the bike rack by the main gates for P4-7 The daily winners will receive a prize and a certificate.

On Thursday we celebrated World Books Day! It was lovely to see all the children’s outfits, they all looked great. 

We started the day by listening to the Wonky Donkey story read by Gregor and Lyndsey from Radio Borders Breakfast show. After break we were joined by P5/6 to do some reading. The children selected a book from the library and together the children spent time reading, enjoying and talking about the stories. You can see from the pictures how much the children enjoyed this. 

After lunch we read Handas Surprise. In this story a little girl fills a basket with different fruits to take to her friend. This linked to our work around healthy eating. We discussed the different fruits in the story along with some other ones the children were less familiar with. Miss Notman had brought in a range of fruits for everyone to see. We then did some different activities around the book and prepared the fruit to taste. Some of the fruits  we prepared were lemon, lime, grapefruit, grapes, pomegranate, mango, pineapple, apples and oranges. The children took great care preparing the fruit and being really safe while using knives. Together we tasted the grapefruit, lime and lemon. We talked about the different tastes; sweet, sour and bitter. The children’s faces showed their reactions brilliantly! After preparing the fruit we sat down to watch Gangsta Granny and made our own fruits salads to enjoy while we watched. 

What a great World Book Day! 

Earlier in the week some of the boys built a tower and wanted their photo taken with it. They then went on to take some photos of their own and enjoyed posing and filling the iPad camera roll! 

This week we finished our reports about Galashiels and moved onto looking at poetry and rhyming. We will be writing a poem called ‘I am…’ To go alongside our poem we drew some self portraits in art. We discussed what a self portrait was, practiced our pencil control and talked about the features of our faces. This was a tricky task but the children (as always) showed determination and tried their very best.

Here are the finished results: 

I hope everyone has enjoyed a nice break and is ready to get back to learning on Monday. 

A couple of weeks ago we learned about Chinese New Year and what animal is represented this year. This year is the year of the Tiger. We discussed how Chinese New Year is celebrated. We made our own Chinese Dragons to celebrate the occasion. 

In literacy we have been working on writing reports about our local area and Galashiels. It has been interesting to learn about what we have in Galashiels thinking about; things to do, shops, parks, places around Galashiels and schools in the area. We have gathered information and are beginning to write each section. 

In numeracy we have been finishing off our work on fractions. I am so impressed that some of the children are able to recognise thirds, fifths and tenths without having been taught this but using their knowledge of quarters and halves to further their learning. 
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This week we learned about Burns night and Scotland. We spoke about what we know about Scotland already. On Friday the children recited their Scots poetry that they have been learning. Mrs Angus recorded these to share with the class. They did really well with learning these. They celebrated by having some Scottish shortbread and listening to some Scottish songs. In art we discussed the nations national flowers and created some amazing thistle pictures using different materials.

in maths we continue to work on fractions challenging ourselves with finding 3/4 of a number. This is really tricky but the children tried their very best , using concrete resources to help us work out the answers. 

Star of the week this week was Callie for her continued effort in her learning and trying her very best when learning new and tricky things. 

This week in numeracy we have been working more on our fractions. This week focusing on finding 1/4 of a shape or a number. The boys and girls have picked this up really well, but we will continue to focus on this further in the coming weeks, to practice this further.

In science this week we looked at Recognising different states like solids, liquids and gases. In our writing work we have been looking at extending our sentences using colourful semantics. This weeks focus was on why? We extended our sentences using ‘because’ and ‘to’ as a connective to explain why. 

With Mrs Angus the boys and girls have been learning a Scots poem. They created a prop picture to use when reciting their poems. Mrs Angus was very impressed by how well they have been learning these. 

Continuing our Scots theme we created some tartan by weaving paper. This was a little bit tricky and required perseverance. They have been put up to display and are adding a real pop of colour to the corridor. 

It was very difficult to choose a star of the week this week, but this week it was awarded to Taylor. For showing great enthusiasm to learning and always trying her best. 
Last weeks star was Dylan for making a really positive start to the new year. 

I’m sure it will be another busy week this week with lots of learning continuing within our classroom.